The invention relates to a method and an apparatus for preparing mail pieces.
In the field of mail processing it is known to gather several postal items, such as a letter with enclosures and/or an account statement consisting of several pages, of a mail set to be sent to the same recipient and insert the gathered postal items in the same envelope. However, the maximum number of postal items that can be combined into a mail piece is limited. For example, the maximum number of postal items that can be folded simultaneously in a folding station can be limited. Furthermore, limitations can be imposed by a maximum thickness of the gathered stack of postal items that can be inserted reliably into a single envelope. Furthermore an upper weight limit of a postage category can make it unattractive to add postal items causing the weight limit to be exceeded, in particular if a postage meter is used that can only apply a single postage value to all mail pieces to be franked during a job. Only when such limitations are anticipated as the postal items are defined or prepared, it is possible to take measures in advance to distribute the postal items of a mail set over a plurality of mail pieces.
However, in practice it is a cumbersome burden for staff determining the contents of documents to be sent to recipients to take into account limitations of physically preparing and mailing the mail sets, in particular because the physical preparation of the mail pieces is a highly automated process typically carried out remote from the persons determining the contents of documents to be sent. When limitations imposed by the preparation of mail pieces are not anticipated, or when printing additional information on the postal items is not possible or not desired, as e.g. with glossy brochures, special measures are required to avoid limitations as discussed. It is for instance known to feed envelopes of different sizes in which documents are to be inserted in accordance with the number of postal items to be inserted. Providing a larger envelope may also eliminate the need for folding, and a larger number of postal items can be inserted in a larger envelope.
However, such measures require relatively complex and accordingly costly machinery for preparing the postal items. Such apparatus can be employed economically only if the additional features are used frequently.